I think that I have pretty much given up trying to make my own edibles because I can’t seem to get the dosage right. Of course. everyone is affected differently, so it’s trial and error. I also wish I could get the leaves rather than just the buds. Edibles baked with buds have a strong skunky flavor. I don’t remember that happening when you use the leaves.

So, if you are going to start trying to use Medical Marijuana for insomnia, I suggest starting with the caramel nuggets, and the most cost effective way and easiest way to use them is to cut each 50 mg nugget into four or five pieces and suck on one before you go to bed. That is what is working for me. Not all dispensaries carry a wide variety of ways to consume Medical Marijuana, although all seem to carry capsules and lozenges. I just didn’t want to swallow capsules.

Between 10 mg and 12.5 mg of Indica seems to be enough to help me fall asleep and be able to go back to sleep after I wake up to go to the bathroom. It works better than any prescription medication I have tried.

So, for now, this tour is taking a break, since this dose and product seems to be working for me. If I have any great subsequent revelations, I will post them here.

I do have to report that one night I accidentally took a double does (didn’t cut the nugget correctly) and really tripped out. The worse part was panicking because I was alone in my bedroom on the other side of the house from everyone else and felt very disoriented. Suppose I got a heart attack! I was afraid to get out of bed because I was dizzy and the walls were circling around me. I learned my lesson. All I want to do is be able to sleep; I guess I don’t like feeling that much out of control any more.

Since I moved in with my daughter and family about five years ago (they are my assisted living arrangement), I have not done much cooking or baking. I never really did much baking anyway, but so far I’ve made two tries at pot brownies and one at cookies. I thought that buying the actual buds and baking my own edibles would be cheaper.

Before I did any baking, I ground up the Indica strain buds, slow heated them in coconut oil for hours, and then used the oil for the baked goods. That is the simplest way to do it. The most elaborate, and supposedly the most effective, is the Rick Simpson method, which up until last week, was a secret. Simpson makes his oil using the leaves as well as buds and begins by immersing them in a solvent. At the moment, the only place that you can buy Rick Simpson Oil is in California. I have decided that, even with my short cut version, not only is making the oil too much work; its impossible to figure out how much oil to mix with how much weed and equally impossible to ever know how potent the result is going to be.

Not only did my baked goods have an underlying skunky smell, but I had to eat too many of them to feel any effect of relaxation. And they didn’t taste that good either, whether I mixed the gunky residue in the the batter or not. I’ve given up on making my own oil and baking brownies.

I wish that I could grow my own plants. All I would need is a couple of them. But, in Massachusetts, you can only grow a few plants if you are disabled or can’t get to a dispensary, or are very poor. So much for legally growing my own. So, back I go to the dispensary.

As soon as I step through the door, I feel like Alice in Wonderland.

Each time I go, the “menu” is different, with different strains available with names such as “Amnesia Haze,” “Afgooey,” and “Sour Tsunami X Cataract Kush.” The “Edibles” on the menu are usually the same: chocolate bars, caramel nuggets, and lozenges. There’s tincture that I would consider, but it’s not available in the Indica strain (which is for relaxation). This time they also are advertising some kind of “shake,” but I don’t bother to ask.

Instead I get into a discussion about the menu with a gray-bearded guy in line ahead of me. He does the caramel Dose Nuggets, he says. I look at the prices. They are the same as the lozenges, which I have tried and don’t like. The capsules are $4 each at the lowest dose. I don’t like swallowing capsules at bed time, and I’m still playing around with “cost vs benefit.”

I notice that the caramel nuggets come in 50 mg doses as well as 10 mg. I look at the price of each and start doing some math. An individual 10 mg nugget is $5. A 50 mg nugget is $15, and if I cut it into five pieces, that would give me five 10 mg doses ($3 a piece). It’s a lot cheaper to cut up the bigger nugget, so I that’s what I get, enough to cut up and last me for several weeks. I also buy a cannabis chocolate bar to try. What the hell, right?

I’m on Facebook with Grannies for Grass, and they post frequently about research success in the use of medical marijuana to treat and minimize the symptoms of various illnesses, and that is where I find all kinds of good information.

For example, it’s important to understand that marijuana/cannabis is composed of many different cannabinoids, CBD and THC currently being of the most interest to the medical community.

I am willing to bet that researchers will eventually find that it is the synergy between the CBD and THC that is really responsible for whatever cures happen.

CBD can be bought online via any number of sites. It is legal. It doesn’t have a psychoactive effect. It doesn’t taste great in its most potent and least expensive oil form, so it’s also available as other flavored products, such as tinctures — which then dilute the potency. The place from which I ordered my CBD oil has lower prices if you have a medical marijuana registration card, which I do. But it is available to everyone. Just have your credit card handy.

I bought the bad tasting CBD oil, since I am used to the taste of herbal extracts, which often taste like dirt. And it was the least expensive of the oils they have to offer. Mine came in a needle-less syringe marked to indicate ten doses. Each dose of the very thick oil (the consistency of Vaseline) is about the size of a baby pea. I don’t take it every day, and I don’t know if that makes a difference in terms of its purported ability to prevent and heal disease. I’m experimenting. It’s part of the Tour.

The medical marijuana I buy at the dispensary is the usual kind that contains THC, CBD, and all of the other cannabinoids. And that’s where this Tour really takes off.

I have discovered that marijuana buds smell skunky. (I don’t remember that about the leaves, but my last connection with those was more than 20 years ago.) And so a vague haze of that smell permeates the dispensary and wafts out as I am buzzed through the door into the small, locked entrance foyer, where I have to show my official marijuana registration card and driver’s license. After the happy young man finds me on the computer and buzzes me farther in, I am greeted by a long line of fellow travelers awaiting their turns at the upscale glass and chrome counter. It looks kind of like a cosmetic store, with light wood paneling, recessed lighting, and glass display shelves featuring bags of edibles, oddly shaped paraphernalia, and samples of the assorted fuzzy-looking green buds. At least five “associates” are busy behind the counter, helping customers choose among the offerings, which include actual buds of miscellaneous strains, lozenges, chocolates, capsules, and lotions.

When my turn comes, my identification papers are checked again, and my legitimacy confirmed by the computer. “It’s my first time,” I tell the smiling, attractive middle-aged woman. That is her cue to ask me what ailments I am treating give and me a run-down of what is available that might help. She hands me a menu with descriptions and prices.

At first I am overwhelmed by “sticker shock.” $5 per lozenge. $50 for 1/8 oz of bud. $100 for 1/4 oz. There are also capsules (30 for $100), vaporizer cartridges ($25 each), and pre-rolled joints ($15 each). And you can only pay with cash, a debit card, or as a cash advance with a credit card. A prescription med would be a lot cheaper; unfortunately, the many I’ve tried either don’t work or have side effects to which I don’t want to subject myself.

I did my homework before I arrived, so I think I know what I want. There are two major strains of marijuana: indica and sativa. The former is “prescribed” to help with relaxation and sleep (also inflammation and pain). The latter is supposed to rev you up and help alleviate various physiological symptoms. The choice for my insomnia is obvious.

I also know that I don’t want to smoke it or vaporize it, so I go with the lozenges. 10 of them. $50. I will try them, but there is no way I can afford to buy enough to use them for a month of sleepless nights. Who knows if they will work, anyway.

In August of 1969, when my younger cousins never made it to Woodstock because they got stuck in all of the other traffic trying to get there, I was married and living in rural suburbia with a 7 year old daughter and a son several months from his birth. While I was into the music of the era, I had neither interest in nor access to weed. I can’t remember whether I cared or not.

Fast forward to the 80s. I am a divorced single working mother during the day and disco diva at night. I have access to weed through a colleague who grows it in his urban backyard and shares the dried leaves freely. Smoking before dancing keeps me from getting out of breath (the THC opens up airways) and loosens my inhibitions. I love the nightlife; I love to boogie.

Those Disco Nights

Those were the nights,
tho she never did the coke
in the shadows behind the bar
where the blue-eyed bouncer,
strategically sun-bronzed and bleached
macho-hot in open shirt gleaming gold,
found new places for fast hands;
but she’d arrive already gone
from toking on the road,
primed for fast stepping,
skirt hiked high on thigh,
eyes that said “ready
to hustle me dizzy,”
spinning close and low
dropping now
all smiles
and sweat
and bass-booming blood
binding her to the heat
of those gone dancing nights.

But I am not being a great parent. I am trying to survive. As I move into my 50s, disco starts to poop out and so do I. It’s a little too late to fix what I messed up as a parent, but I do the best I can.

Fast forward to today. I am almost 76, have oseoarthritis and really bad insomnia. I have tried just about every available prescription, OTC, and herbal concoction to alleviate symptoms. Some never work. Some work but stop. Massachusetts has legalized medical marijuana to use for those conditions, and I know enough about weed not to be afraid of it. So, I go and get an official Medical Marijuana card. I get online and try to figure out how to take it, how much to take, what kind to take. It’s information overload. I commandeer a friend to accompany me, and we drive up to Northampton to the only MMJ dispensary available to me. And so begins the inspiration for this Medical Marijuana Mystery Tour. Keep checking this site for more stops on the journey.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. Whatever I might rant about (corruption in politics, corporate mortal sins, our malfunctioning Gestapo) is being satisfactorily covered by my Facebook friends. My goal here has always been to deal with my own interests from, what I hoped was, unique perspectives. Whether explaining how to fix t-shirts so that you don’t have to wear a bra, or chronicling my mother’s five last days, I tried to share an authentic experience, told from my gut and my heart.

The challenge, lately, has been to find something I want to share with authenticity and guts and heart.

I will be 76 in another month or so, and my life as an older person is nothing like I imagined, in both good and bad ways.

One of the bad ways is that I have had really bad insomnia since the fall of 2014. I’ve tried just about everything available — prescriptions, OTC, herbal concoctions, TENS stimulation, exercise, meditation, visual imagery. Some worked for a while then stopped and some never worked at all.

When the state I live in, Massachusetts, legalized medical marijuana, I decided to give it a try. And also to blog, from my unique perspective as a “gray lady,” about this new adventure.

I don’t know where it will take me. Will take us. Keep in mind that I’m not a very private person; I tend to put it all out there, and, as usual, you will probably learn more about me than you really want to know. Or not. What I hope is that my experiences will shed some light on how medical marijuana might enhance the lives of the elderly, whether to help us deal with insomnia, or pain and inflammation, or simply to help us just feel all-round better.

I will try to link to specific and factual information where appropriate. But mostly this is about me. Because, you know, it’s always about me.